From Cornell: iPad app lets plant specialists assess disease severity. “Estimate relies on Standard Area Diagrams (SADs), a series of photographs of diseased leaves, with each photo containing a leaf incrementally more diseased than the previous one. Each SAD shows disease severity in terms of the percent of the leaf that is diseased. Users then examine a leaf in the field, for example, and compare and match it with SADs to estimate the disease severity.” The app is free.

In development: a database of annotated tissue images (PRESS RELEASE). “Royal Philips (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHIA) and LabPON, the first clinical laboratory to transition to 100 percent histopathology digital diagnosis, today announced its plans to create a digital database of massive aggregated sets of annotated pathology images and big data utilizing Philips IntelliSite Pathology Solution… As one of the largest pathology laboratories in the Netherlands, LabPON will contribute its repository of approximately 300,000 whole slide images (WSI) they prospectively create each year to the database. This will contain de-identified datasets of annotated cases that are manually commented by the pathologist, and will comprise of a wide variety of tissue and disease types, as well as other pertinent diagnostic information to facilitate deep learning.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Engadget: Facebook bars use of its social data for surveillance tools. “Twitter now has a key ally in its fight against surveillance tools: its biggest rival. Facebook has updated its policies to explicitly forbid developers from using its data (including Instagram’s) to create surveillance tools that target its users. The social network says it has already cracked down on these monitoring platforms for violating existing policies in the past several months, but the new approach theoretically eliminates any ambiguity about the company’s views.”

USEFUL STUFF

Lifehacker: Publishthis.email Instantly Turns An Email Into a Web Page. “Need to create a publicly accessible web page as quickly as possible? Publishthis.email turns the contents of an email into a publicly accessible site as quickly as you can write it.” It’s not clear how long these Web pages last…

How-To Geek: How to Set Up and Use Google Daydream View with Your Android Phone. “Mobile virtual reality is the new hotness out right now—phones that users can strap into headsets and get a real, genuine VR experience are a great way to see what VR’s all about without the huge price tag. And when it comes down to it, Google nailed it with Daydream View.”

Social Media Examiner: How to Use Facebook Messenger Day for Marketing. “Want a new way to create time-sensitive short video stories? Have you heard of Facebook Messenger Day? Now, marketers can use Messenger to deliver disappearing short-form video stories and images to a specific group of people.”

I’ve read plenty of stories about chatbots on Facebook, but this is the first one that made me mutter to myself, “Man, I could have used that in school…” From CTV News: Facebook tool created by B.C. teen to plan homework gains overseas popularity. “A Facebook tool that helps students be more productive and keep track of assignments developed by a Victoria teen has gone viral in an unexpected place. Alec Jones, 14, says his chatbot, Christopher Bot, that helps students stay on top of their homework has garnered more than 3,000 subscribers, with many of them based in Thailand.”

The Guardian: Tim Berners-Lee: I invented the web. Here are three things we need to change to save it. “Today marks 28 years since I submitted my original proposal for the worldwide web. I imagined the web as an open platform that would allow everyone, everywhere to share information, access opportunities, and collaborate across geographic and cultural boundaries. In many ways, the web has lived up to this vision, though it has been a recurring battle to keep it open. But over the past 12 months, I’ve become increasingly worried about three new trends, which I believe we must tackle in order for the web to fulfill its true potential as a tool that serves all of humanity.”

CNBC: As many as 48 million Twitter accounts aren’t people, says study. “A big chunk of those ‘likes,’ ‘retweets,’ and ‘followers’ lighting up your Twitter account may not be coming from human hands. According to new research from the University of Southern California and Indiana University, up to 15 percent of Twitter accounts are in fact bots rather than people.” Good afternoon, Internet…

Do you like ResearchBuzz? Does it help you out? Please consider supporting it on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. I love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you. Feel free to comment on the blog, or @ResearchBuzz on Twitter. Thanks!